


life finds a way

by partialconstellations



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Babies, Children of Characters, F/M, Family Bonding, Family Fluff, Fix-It, Gen, No beta we die like illiterates, Theon Greyjoy Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-17 22:18:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20628434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/partialconstellations/pseuds/partialconstellations
Summary: Arya’s children were to inherit the North but then the little boy with his deep blue eyes and his auburn curls interrupted those plans.Sansa didn’t really know where he’d come from, just that he’d stood in the Winterfell courtyard one day, with nobody to stop him, wandered in from seemingly nowhere, crying, with a little torn doll clutched firmly to his chest.





	life finds a way

**Author's Note:**

> Since I accidentally wrote and posted a fic a couple of days ago that fits perfectly into one of the themes of Theonsa Week (I never realise these things happen before they actually do. I don't do Tumblr), I decided to _actually_ write something for it. I intended for this to be around 1000 words and just Theonsa's little family, so you can see how well that turned out. Have some shameless fluff. There is the tiniest hint of sex mentioned, but I didn't think it justified a mature rating (or teen, for that matter, but that might be incredibly European of me. If someone minds, please tell me).
> 
> Theonsa Week Day 3, prompt: Family
> 
> Please excuse the dumb title, I was watching Jurassic Park last night while editing this and I have zero regrets.

Arya’s children were to inherit the North but then the little boy with his deep blue eyes and his auburn curls interrupted those plans. 

Sansa didn’t really know where he’d come from, just that he’d stood in the Winterfell courtyard one day, with nobody to stop him, wandered in from seemingly nowhere, crying, with a little torn doll clutched firmly to his chest. 

He looked just enough like Robb (and Rickon), even with his eyes the wrong shade of blue, to make her wonder, but of course that was impossible. The boy could have been no older than three and Robb had been dead for many years more. Once it became clear the boy had no family, he had already found his way into her heart almost by accident and when he crawled into their bed one night after a nightmare, it decided the matter.

“Well,” Theon huffed, somewhat indignantly, after being forced to make room, finding himself far closer to the edge of the bed and too far from Sansa for his liking. “It seems you found yourself an admirer.”

Sansa reached over the boy’s small form, curled tightly into himself, his little fists clutching into her shift for comfort, for Theon’s hand. “Remember when we were young and whenever one of us had a nightmare, we would just crawl into Robb’s bed and he would just accept it and told us it was alright and that we could stay the night?”

“Speak for yourself. I never did such a thing. I was older and _ mature_,” Theon says with feigned indignance. 

“Of course you were.” Even in the almost perfect darkness, he can see the quirk of her eyebrow. “I went looking for him once during a thunderstorm in your first year here, when Arya was still a baby, and he wasn’t in his bed and I got so frightened. I thought something must have happened, because why else would he be _ gone_? So I stood there, with my doll, clutching at his door handle and didn’t know what to _ do _ and then Jon came up the stairs, because _ he _ was looking for Robb, too, and took my hand and we went looking for him and _ then _ I heard the two of you talking behind your door.”

“I remember,” Theon acknowledges begrudgingly, carding his hand through the boy’s curls carefully. “It was my first storm away from the sea and I didn’t understand the way it reflected in the snow, I thought it was your gods coming to get me. And that stupid little boy somehow just _ knew _I’d get scared but would never admit it and came to me and told me stories about the winter that you were born in. And then you and Jon came, clutching at each other’s hands, so shy, the both of you. And you looked so small, the way you were just standing there and Robb just shoved me over and told you to get in bed, too. We gave Lady Stark such a fright, too, when you and Robb weren’t in your beds come morning.” 

The first few times she found her children in the hostage’s chambers, Lady Stark had raised a fuss, until she realised that he did not intend to hurt her children. She did so when she saw the way Theon held little newborn Bran, Robb and Sansa fussing at him to show him how to properly hold a baby, after making fun of him for not knowing how to do so, not understanding that the older boy was the youngest of his own siblings.

Sansa smiles fondly at the memory, one of the few happy ones from their childhoods they share, intertwining her hand with his in the little boy’s hair. “We’ll keep him, you know. We can’t give him away to a different family, not after this.”

“I thought you’d already decided this,” he replies.

Sansa frowns. “I would never decide such a thing without consulting you, you dolt. He’ll be yours, too.”

“Just don’t name him Ned,” Theon asks, a small measure of hurt in his voice, whenever his conflicting feelings of Ned Stark find their way to the surface. 

“No,” she agrees. “I think _ Robb _ fits him much better anyway.”

Theon's fingers tighten around hers in reply and neither of them have terrors that night, with their little son nestled between them, contendly hugging the carefully mended toy to his chest.

* * *

Sansa had insisted that she was happy raising little Robb with Theon and that he was more than enough, but then the little orphan girl that looked so incredibly Northern, brown hair so dark it was almost black, a strong nose, but with bright blue eyes with a spark of mischief in them even as a babe, appeared on their doorstep.

Theon was with the maester as she did, doing exercises that should strengthen the muscles in his arms and fingers, with the aim of being able to draw and shoot a longbow properly again. He’d already learned an adjusted grip for the compound bow from one of Jon’s people, which served him well in the battle of the godswood, so with further adjustments, it was an achievable goal.

In the first years, his exercises were about building up strength and dexterity in his fingers -- he’d said he wanted to be able to grip a knife properly again and not have anyone cut his meat for him and that was true enough, but he still remembers the exultation he’d felt when he managed to make Sansa peak on just his fingers for the first time without them cramping up painfully while still inside of her.

Now, with spring finally upon them after the long winter, the cold not leaving his bones fully, but his ever-present aches lessening, is the perfect time to start training again. Maybe he’d be able to hunt more than rabbits and fowl again someday. He keeps that thought in mind, as the maester shows him how to build up the muscle around his atrophied bones and mercilessly makes him repeat the same movements over and over again, until every part of his body hurts worse than before.

A guard comes in, little more than a boy himself, with the little baby in his arms, wailing like there’s everything wrong in the world. His eyes find the maester first, who is already rising, and then Theon, still gritting his teeth as he carefully moves his shoulder back and forth. “I’m sorry, m’lord, I would not dare to interrupt, but y’see, we found this one in the snow by the godswood wall, screamin’ ‘er ‘ead off.”

The maester beckons for the guard to hand him the blue-faced baby and relief washes over the young man’s face to be relieved of his responsibility. “No, you were right to bring her here directly, she’s close enough to death as it is, she’s freezing.”

As the maester busies himself with saving the baby’s life and the guard leaves, Theon anxiously watches the maester’s movements, sympathising with her plight, albeit feeling rather useless. He knows what it’s like to feel the cold down to his bones, to want to scream his head off only to feel like you’re doing something, anything.

* * *

Three days later, after the maester confirms the little girl would likely live and after having spoken to Sansa about the matter, Theon sits Robb down shortly before the boy’s bedtime, two full years after he’d come to them, and asks him how he would feel about having a little sister. His eyes brighten immediately and a wide smile spreads on his face and in this moment, he looks so much like his namesake that it makes his chest hurt. 

“Is Mama pregnant?” Robb asks, so innocently and the pride of knowing his lessons evident on his face, but it makes Theon’s head spin, the voices in his head that he is _ not good enough _ spinning out of control for just a moment, but he manages to shove them down, where they belong.

“No,” he replies slowly. “You remember how you came to us, right? That you just wandered into the courtyard one day and nobody knew where you came from.”

Robb nods solemnly, anxiety showing in his eyes, knowing that he’s rattled something loose in his father but not knowing what exactly. He’s too empathetic for his own good, sometimes. Sansa once wondered if it’s the name’s doing, while Theon insisted that is why they named him thus. 

“It’s quite like that. The little baby that was found outside the godswood, your mother and I would like to keep her. Like we kept you.”

“Are you ever going to have children with Mama being pregnant?” Robb asks, the innocence back in his voice, eyes shining brightly. 

“No, we won’t,” Theon replies softly, and the knot in his chest tightens, just a little.

“That’s alright,” Robb declares with all the decisiveness inherent to children and then there’s eagerness back in his eyes, so quickly that Theon forgets all about the knot in his chest. “What are you going to name her? She’s going to need a name!”

“Have I ever told you about my own mama?” Theon asks, full well-knowing the answer is “no.” Robb shakes his head and Theon forces a smile as he holds up his son’s bed covers to pat the bedding underneath. “Right, then get in and I’m going to tell you a bedtime story.”

* * *

Robb is almost ten -- or as near as his parents were able to figure, having chosen the day of his naming as, well, his name day, his third, -- and Alannys six when little Catelyn and Eddara (and their mother) are deemed strong enough to travel North by Storm’s End’s maester. Their early birth took a toll on them and their mother both, so much that the maester strongly discouraged Arya from birthing further children, but when they finally arrive, both her and Gendry look so happy, if exhausted from travel with two infants, that anything else pales in comparison.

Sansa coos over her little nieces, who stare at her out of bright blue eyes, their father’s, and Robb dutifully shows Alannys how to support little raven-haired Cat’s head as he hands his cousin over to his sister. Eddara’s hair is just a touch lighter than her twin’s, closer to Arya’s than Gendry’s. Theon sees Sansa and Arya watch the eager little boy with matching expressions, knowing that they’re both thinking of another little boy with auburn curls, who showed all three of them how to hold their little siblings.

That evening, when Gendry has fallen asleep with both his daughters on his chest, Theon again watches Sansa and Arya watch their children, the crooked stitches on the shirt he’s been trying to mend more neatly forgotten in his lap.

“Are you _ sure _ they’re not yours?” Arya asks Sansa quietly when she witnesses Alannys getting frustrated at a mistake she’s made in her sewing, shoving the whole thing as far away from herself as she can manage and pouting, and Robb immediately dropping his story book to take it up to examine the pattern with a quick eye, patiently showing Alannys how to correct her mistake. Alannys still looks sullen but she does watch, not ready to accept that her older brother might be better than her at something.

Sansa’s eyes turn to cold as she turns to give a withering look at her sister. “Of course they are ours,” she replies, her voice prim and deceptively quiet, booking no further argument. Knowing Arya just chose her words poorly, but his heart beating more quickly as well, Theon reaches out for Sansa, taking her hand into his own and squeezing to calm her temper.

* * *

Gendry and Arya are in Winterfell for almost a moon’s turn when their relations from even further North arrive under the cover of darkness. Arya rolls her eyes at them and Sansa clucks her tongue. “Like anyone here cares enough about your supposed exile to inform the Watch you’ve snuck back to visit your family,” she says, disapproval practically dripping from her words. 

“It _ is _ an exile,” Jon insists, stubborn as ever, but the small smile, once a rarity, he shoots at Tormund belies his words.

Tormund’s and Jon’s daughters are both much older, Eir a woman grown and Kara almost so, and Sansa had worried that they wouldn’t accept their invitation, and while Kara hangs back with her hand in Ghostʼs fur, Eir confidently embraces her in a bone-crushing hug that makes no secret of who fathered her, even if Tormund himself has always been more careful around Sansa. 

The next morning, when the children wake and excitedly greet their older cousins and uncles, whom they’ve only heard stories about so far, Kara kneels down to Alannys to present her with a small bow, easing Sansa’s worries about their relations beyond the Wall not seeing them as such. Maybe it has eased her worries a little too much, once she realises that her brother’s daughter has presented her own with a deadly weapon. But Theon is already by their side, also on his knees, showing Alannys how to properly grip it and not poke someone’s eye out with its limbs by accident.

Robb watches the three of them with a hint of jealousy in his eyes, but then Jon kneels down by him to present him with a small bundle of his own and the tenseness goes out of his body until Sansa notices the bundle has _ ears _ and Robb lets out a small yelp of delight.

Tormund and Eir are with Arya and Gendry, each of them holding a baby, Tormund with that an expression on his face that matches the one on Theon’s as he asked her to keep Alannys. Little Cat is fascinated by the red and grey of the manʼs beard, Tormund giving a boisterous laugh as she reaches for it and doesnʼt seem too intent on letting go, while Eddara is watching Eir with curious, quiet eyes. 

Sansa joins Jon and Robb on the floor, where a small, light grey wolf with mismatched eyes has made his way out of the bundle and is currently sniffing Robb curiously. 

“You didnʼt think it was necessary to consult me about this, did you?” Sansa asks sternly.

“Starks need wolves to protect them,” Jon declares like that settles the matter.

“Then what about Alannys?”

“Donʼt fret. Thereʼs another pup for her outside with Ghost, just asleep. Ghostʼs mate is wild, so you might have some fun with them.”

“And them?” She nods in the direction of Arya’s family.

“If you think Nymeria isnʼt watching over them, youʼre a fool. And I donʼt think you are.”

Robb interrupts her thoughts. “Mama, Uncle Jon said you once had a wolf, like him. What happened to him?”

“She died, a long time ago. We all used to have one. The uncle we named you for, he used to have one, too. Weʼll tell you about them soon, I promise.” 

Jon frowns at her, and she canʼt tell if itʼs disapproval because she hasnʼt told Robb about his namesake yet or because he thinks the boy is too young. But it doesnʼt really matter what he thinks, what matters is that Theon and her are ready to tell their children the whole truth, not just parts of it.

As if reading her thoughts, Theon looks at her over his shoulder and the smile on his face tells her that, however different their lives have turned out, despite their losses, the one they’ve made is good.

Always moving forwards.

**Author's Note:**

> I also might have named Tormund’s daughters after Valkyries solely so I don’t feel too bad about not working on that paper that is due prrrretty soon.  

> 
> Thank you so much for reading!  
Kudos, comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated.


End file.
